Remarks on the Report
of the Representative of
the International at the
August 7 Emergency Conference

(August 7, 1927)

The whole of the Comintern representative's report is very important.¹ First, the
issue of the Guomindang has long been a problem for our Party and has not
yet been resolved. There was, in the first place, the issue of joining it, and
then there emerged the question of what kind of people were supposed to join
it, i.e., that industrial workers should not join it. In fact, we did not make up
our mind whether we should instruct the peasants to join it or not, let alone
the industrial workers. At that time, a fundamental idea of ours was that the
Guomindang belonged to others. We did not realize that it was an empty
house waiting for people to move in. Later, like a maiden getting into the
bridal sedan chair, we reluctantly moved into this empty house, but we never
made up our mind to play the host there. I think this was a big mistake.
Afterward, some of our people argued that industrial workers should also join
it. I heard that in Hubei a decision was made to that effect, but it was merely
empty words on paper which were never carried out. In the past, there were
some among the masses who, disregarding the orders of the Center, seized
some lower-level organs of the Guomindang and played the host in the house.
But this ran counter to the opinion of the Center. It is only now that we have
changed our tactics, so as to let the workers, peasants, and masses enter the

We have translated this text from Baqi huiyi (The August 7 Meeting) (Beijing: Zhonggong
dangshi ziliao chubanshe, 1986), pp. 57-58. According to the preface to this volume,
most of the documents it contains were there openly published for the first time. Mao's
remarks regarding Lominadze's report had, however, been copied down at the Museum of
the History of the Revolution and included in the Mao Zedong Ji. Bujuan, Vol. 2.
1. The reference is to Besso Lominadze, a protégé of Stalin, who had replaced M. N.
Roy as Comintern representative to the Chinese Communist Party in late July
1927. (Borodin, who left China at about the same time, had been representative to the
Guomindang.) For a translation of Lominadze's report, see Saich, Rise to Power, Doc.
C.3, pp. 308-13.